


Nebulae

by kriidsedovah



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Space, Eventual Smut, Fantasy, M/M, Magic, Rating May Change, Science Fiction, Space mermaids, Spell One- Future, hqmagicfest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 21:54:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7775107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kriidsedovah/pseuds/kriidsedovah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hinata Shouyou is a mechanic on the Earth's Planetary Alliance ship <em>Karasuno</em>, on a mission to forge a treaty with Earth's first alien encounter in order to secure their resources as powerful magical allies. Hinata shouldn't have anything to do with the diplomacy and negotiations, until a chance encounter with one of the most powerful of the aliens' group has Hinata placed front and center as a liaison between the two groups. If that wasn't hard enough, opponents to the treaty have arisen, and between that and falling in love, Hinata walks a dangerous line between what he wants and what others require of him.<br/>(Magicfest 2016 Spell One- Future)<br/>EDIT 7/25/18: Will not be continuing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nebulae

**Author's Note:**

> what the fuck am i doing  
> holy shit, this is already way longer than i planned. well, okay, here's my (definitely not late) entry for the 2016 Haikyuu!! Magicfest spell! I will be expanding on this, don't worry. this is a rough and dirty introduction to get people interested, and i'll keep it going in the next few weeks. so for now, thanks for checking this out!  
> EDIT 7/25/18: Cancelled, will not be continuing.

“Attention all crew members, this is a message from your Captain.” The shipwide announcement blared across all decks. There was a beat of silence.

“Crew, we’re approaching the Gathering Place now. Remember, this is a diplomatic mission, and I want all of you to remain on your best behavior. We don’t know yet what our new alliance will bring, so stay on your toes but remain respectful. We will be receiving our alien friends in approximately thirty minutes. Ukai out.”

The system shut off with a click, and Hinata heaved a sigh from where he was positioned, upside down with his hands elbow deep in electronics.

“We’re not even gonna be able to _see_ the cool aliens,” he muttered. “They’re just gonna meet with the ambassadors, drone on at each other for hours, and then leave. That’s so _boring_.”

“Shut up,” Kageyama told him. He was seated right side up on the pipe next to where Hinata was stripping wires and cursing, picking at his lunch from the mess. “It’s not that big a deal. It’s not even dangerous, or anything.”

Hinata twisted his body in a way that looked impossible in order to squint at his friend. “Easy for _you_ to say! You’re _bridge crew_ , you’ll be front and center for any of the cool stuff that’s gonna happen, like- like-“ Hinata screwed up his mouth in thought, one eye on Kageyama and one on the sparking electric wires in front of him. “Like what if they capture Ukai? Then you’d have to mount a _rescue mission_ to save him.” This was said with the appropriate amount of awe given to such a glorious task. “But then,” Hinata continued, frowning at his work in distraction, “Once you kill a bunch of aliens like _pew pew pew!_ and _boom!”_ Hinata gesticulated wildly, causing Kageyama to duck the live wires that were being thrown around. He shot his friend a glare, which was ignored, “You’ll find him, but he won’t wanna leave because he fell in love with one of the hot alien girls there. But you’ll have to convince him that his crew is more important than his own interests, and he’ll leave to return to his duty, but he’ll always keep her in his heart.” Hinata twisted two wires together and grinned in satisfaction when the lights in the corridor they were in snapped back on to full brightness. He closed the panel on the electrical box with a slam and unhooked his legs from the overhead pipe they had been wrapped around. He climbed down backwards from his precarious position and plopped into the space next to Kageyama.

Kageyama gave him a dubious look. “Hands off,” he snapped, holding his food out of arm’s reach when Hinata tried to snag a French fry with greasy fingers. Hinata pouted at him with big golden eyes until Kageyama relented with a huff and handed over one of the precious potato slices.

“There’s no salt!” Hinata complained through his mouth of potato. Kageyama rolled his eyes.

“They don’t _need_ salt.”

Hinata opened his mouth. Kageyama smacked the back of his head.

“Ouch!”

“ _Do not_ make another salt joke, I swear to Sky and Earth.”

Hinata pouted again and Kageyama stuck his tongue out at him. Scrunching his nose, Hinata checked the time on his chronometer.

“You’re gonna be late for your shift.”

Kageyama cursed and jerked up from his seat. He handed the remains of his lunch over to Hinata and brushed himself off, looking in vain for somewhere to check his appearance.

“Do I look okay?” he demanded. Hinata rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, same idiot as usual.”

Kageyama took a menacing step forward and Hinata recoiled with a shit-eating grin. “You look fine, jeez! The aliens aren’t gonna care.”

“It’s not the _aliens,_ ” Kageyama muttered, in a tone low enough that Hinata likely wasn’t meant to hear.

“Oh, right, it’s the cute Earth Ambassador and her assistant, right?”

Kageyama hissed some kind of expletive at him, too riled up to be coherent, and stormed off toward the nearest lift. Hinata giggled to himself and pulled his comm unit out when it beeped at him. He winced when he realized he was late to report back from his repair in the subdeck.The Engineering Chief’s loud, bright voice echoed off the walls of the hallway.

“Shouyou! You’re late!”

Hinata winced and rubbed the back of his head, though his boss couldn’t see it. “Sorry, Nishinoya. I’m headed back right now.”

“All right, great! We’ve got another compressor leak on Deck Ten, the one with the tiny spaces? You’re the only one small enough to get in there, so record your repair and get back out there, okay?”

Hinata held back a sigh. “Yessir, I’ll be right on it.”

“Great work, Shouyou!” Nishinoya ended the call with a click; he was never one for proper farewells. Hinata looked down at the plate of half-eaten food in his lap and gave a mournful sigh. He stuffed as many French fries in his mouth as he could and dumped the tray into a nearby waste receptacle on his way back to Engineering. It was a shame to see his effort go to waste.

Somewhere above Hinata, on the bridge, Tobio Kageyama skidded into the bridge and snapped a salute to a somewhat bemused Captain Ukai.

“Sorry, Captain!” Kageyama stood at attention. “I apologize for my tardiness, it won’t happen again!”

Ukai looked at the chronometer on his dashboard readout. “Lieutenant Kageyama, you are…five minutes early, in fact.” He gave a reassuring smile. “Though I do appreciate punctuality.”

Kageyama drew himself up to his fullest height, spine so straight it might snap. “Of course, sir,” he said through gritted teeth, moving to take the seat his replacement had vacated in Tactics. When he saw Hinata again, he was _dead._

 

Hinata skidded around the corner and almost bowled over a few technicians who were welding a new panel on a side wall. He barely stopped to acknowledge their shouts of “watch it, kid!” before charging into the main Engineering deck. It was chaos as usual, lights flashing, people doing calibration checks and yelling to each other over the roar of the engines, others laser cutting or replacing old components or generally being busy with the numerous tasks required to keep a spaceship the size of the _Karasuno_ functioning. Hinata trotted over to a little office tucked between an enormous cooling unit and a pipe full of water headed for the filtration deck. The buzzing and humming of the two large pieces of equipment was such that one had to shout to be heard over the noise. Nishinoya Yuu never appeared bothered by this, however. He was rarely inside the office, anyway; even now Hinata could see him on the far side of the main catwalk on this deck, gesticulating and shouting in a cheerful manner at a group of weapons technicians. Hinata grinned at the way one of them flinched a little with every swipe of Noya’s hand a few inches from his face. He turned back to his task and logged in to the terminal, logging his repair and accepting the request for the compressor leak with a tiny sigh.

A large hand slapped his back. Hinata jolted with the force, narrowly avoiding bouncing his head off the terminal screen. He turned to see the shaved head and wide grin of Ryunnosuke Tanaka.

“Tanaka!” Hinata returned the smile. “You’re not supposed to be on the Engineering Deck, are you?”

Tanaka flinched like someone had hit him and put a hasty finger to his lips. “Shh, Hinata, don’t shout that for everyone to hear!” he stage-whispered. “Just…lemme come with you, okay? Noya won’t let me hang around anymore, he says I’m getting in his way.”

 Hinata laughed and turned to head towards the nearest lift, and Tanaka fell into step with him.

“It’s not like I’m needed right now, anyway,” Tanaka complained, reaching up to scratch at his shaved head. “We won’t be warping again until the negotiations are complete.” Under the short hair his scalp was covered in intricate black tattoos, complex patterns of interlocking circles and sigils Hinata could only guess the purpose of, only that they spoke to him of grounding and stability, unwavering mass in the face of uncertainty. They curled down to a point on Tanaka’s forehead between his eyes, and disappeared under the collar of the flowing robes he wore. The tattoos were what marked Tanaka as a druid, one of a small group of people that every ship in Earth’s fleet carried. Without them, long-distance space travel was nigh impossible.

Tanaka caught him looking and grinned. His hand, when it dropped, was also covered in black ink. “They’re meant to help channel and control Earth magic,” he said. “I’m an Earth druid.”

“Do the Sky druids have tattoos like yours?”

“Kind of. The sigils and seals needed are different, so the design is different. They’re also done in gold ink.”

“Wow.” Hinata was starry-eyed. “That’s _amazing_. Did they hurt?”

Tanaka preened a little. “What, these?” He grinned and rolled his sleeves back, exposing even more black ink up both arms. “Nah, it was nothin’! Like a little pinprick. I mean it only took…” Tanaka paused to calculate. “What, four days, maybe?”

“ _Four days?_ ” Hinata gaped at him. “That’s amazing! Why did it take so long?”

“Ah, that’s because of the ink.” Tanaka stuck his hand out. “Here, feel that.”

Hinata reached out with a tentative hand and brushed his fingers across the skin of Tanaka’s hand. He blinked in surprise and did it again. The tattoo was ridged rather than smooth, and there was some kind of… sensation behind it, something Hinata couldn’t understand but could feel buzzing in the pit of his stomach. He yanked his hand back in surprise and looked up when Tanaka laughed at him.

“What was that?” Hinata demanded to know. Tanaka grinned and ruffled Hinata’s hair, ignoring the squawk this action received.

“It’s Earth magic,” he said. “The tattoos take so long because not only do they have to be very precise and carefully placed, but they’re all infused with Earth magic. It strengthens the bonds of the seals and it offers a boost to the druid’s natural abilities, so we don’t drain ourselves too fast. Pretty badass, right?”

Hinata’s eyes were bigger than the radar dishes on the hull of the ship. He bounced on the balls of his feet. “That’s so cool!” he shouted, forgetting his volume. The noise echoed down the hallway, and in the distance, there was a startled clang. Hinata whipped his head toward the noise.

“That’s weird…” he said. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be repairing the compressor.” Probably a mix-up, he decided with a firm nod. Well, if somebody else wanted to try contorting their body through the tiny spaces in order to reach that particular compressor, that was fine with him. He hated having to take all the jobs with small spaces, anyway.

“Hey, Tanaka…” Hinata opened his mouth to tell him they could turn back, but was stopped by Tanaka’s hand out in front of him. Hinata shifted his eyes to Tanaka’s face and drew in a quick breath.

Tanaka’s eyes had shifted to pure black, as though his pupils had expanded and swallowed all light. He was staring down the corridor, where it twisted away, hiding whatever was around the corner from view. His tattoos were glowing, Hinata realized with a start. They were turning gold, each seal and sign lighting up as though someone was pouring liquid metal over them.

“There’s something down there,” Tanaka said. His voice, at least, was the same, though it lacked its usual humor. “It’s…it looks like…” He shook his head and squinted. “That can’t be what I think it is,” he murmured to himself.

“What? What is it?”

Tanaka looked down and gave a slow blink, as though he’d forgotten Hinata was there. “It looks like nature magic,” he said. “But that can’t be true…no human…” he trailed off again, staring at something only he could see. Hinata wanted to shake him.

“Is that bad?”

“It…could be dangerous,” Tanaka admitted finally, pulling back a little from whatever it is he was seeing. “Scratch that, it’s definitely dangerous. We need to alert someone about this before we do anything else. Hinata, you need to go back and-“

“What? No way!”

Tanaka glared. “There’s no time to be an idiot, Hinata! Do what I say and-“

“I’m not leaving you here by yourself!” Hinata proclaimed with a stubborn set to his jaw. He held up his comm unit. “Besides, I can call someone down here, and it’s faster than me running all the way back to Engineering.”

Tanaka wavered for a moment, then sighed and shook his head. “You’ve got balls, kid. Okay, you can stay, but _stay back_. I’m serious, this kind of magic is incredibly dangerous. Call somebody down here and I’ll keep an eye on it.”

Hinata nodded and took a step away to call Nishinoya. After a hasty explanation of the situation, he agreed to send a few of the security team down, as well as alerting the rest of the druids and the captain of the situation. Hinata rejoined Tanaka, who had not moved from his spot, though his eyes were no longer dark voids and his tattoos had faded back to their usual stark black.

“There’s more than one magic signature,” Tanaka said. He kept his voice low. “I’ve never seen such a concentrated gathering of energy, outside of the wormhole spells we do. And every now and then they…move. It’s like they’re _alive_.”

“Is that possible?” Hinata whispered.

“Not in humans,” Tanaka replied. “I have an idea now as to what they might be, but if I’m right, it’s not much better than before.”

“Why? What is it?”

Tanaka looked down at Hinata. His mouth twitched. “You’re awful curious for just an Ensign, kid.”

Hinata puffed up. “I’m only Ensign right _now,_ ” he pointed out. “Watch me, soon enough I’ll have a ship of my own!”

Tanaka smothered a bark of laughter at that. “You’re something else. All right, tell you what. Instead of just telling you, let’s see if we can find out for ourselves if I’m right or not?”

Hinata’s eyes grew large. “Like…get closer?”

Tanaka nodded. “We’re just gonna peek around the corner and get a look with our eyes. I can sense two, maybe three signatures. Sky druids are usually better at sensing magic,” he said with a wince. “Once we know for sure what we’re dealing with, we can fall back and wait for reinforcements.”

Hinata nodded, and together, they crept to the corner with as much care as they could muster. As they got closer, they could make out what sounded like one person talking to another, though the language was something Hinata had never heard before. It sounded almost like singing, a sweet, high series of tones that made Hinata’s head fuzzy. The first song was cut off by another, lower and quieter, but somehow more angry, as though irritated by something the first- person? singer?- had communicated. Next to him, Tanaka was squinting as though it would make the unfamiliar language more clear to him. Hinata took a deep breath and peeked around the corner.

Well. Whatever he had been prepared to see, it wasn’t a bunch of aliens arguing in a corridor with gutted wires in their hands.

They didn’t look anything like what he’d expected them to. All Hinata’s initial thoughts of little green alien men (outdated, Kageyama had told him hundreds of times, “and _stupid”_ ) flew out the window in the face of these…creatures. Interestingly enough, from the waist up they were almost humanoid, albeit in colors no human could ever achieve without cosmetic intervention. Their skin looked to resemble scales, shimmery and iridescent under the fluorescent ship lights. The one with the wires in hand was a ruby red color, flecked with black scales here and there. The upper half of their body had two arms and a head, same as any other human, and even what looked like hair, solid black and silky, sticking up in wild disarray. However, the waist was where the similarities ended.

Hinata’s first thought on seeing the lower half of their bodies was _mermaid_. But that didn’t make sense, of course. Mermaids were sea creatures, and this was space. If Kageyama had been there he would not have hesitated to remind his friend that mermaids also _weren’t real,_ but Hinata’s brain had already processed and determined that these creatures were some sort of space mermaid, and nothing would sway him of that fact in his own mind, nor would the fact that each alien possessed their own unique body type. The difference was such that, other than the scales and the language, they hardly seemed related at all. The red one had the largest number of tails, if that was what they could be called; their lower body branched into several twisting tentacle-like segments that always seemed to be in motion, twisting around one another. Each segment was edged with its own small set of fins at the bottom of the tail. They were prehensile enough that the alien could hold up some of the torn wires with one, aiding their hands in carrying them. They was the one who had spoken first, and continued now, shooting what looked to be a beseeching expression at their companions. The one furthest from them responded, covered in black and white scales in vertical stripes and with a tail that had a series of progressively smaller fins down either side. It made a high, yipping sound that might have been a laugh, pointing at the wires in its companions arms and quipping something in that singsong voice. The red one snarled in a decidedly unmusical manner and turned to their final companion, pouting and holding their arms out with the wires in them.

The final alien caught Hinata’s eye in the way the others had not. They weren’t as boisterous as the others had been, leaning on the edge of a power box and watching their companions’ antics with a noticeable lack of expression in its gold flecked eyes. Like the others, they had no pupil- or perhaps the eye was entirely pupil?- as the majority of the eye was solid black. Where Tanaka’s eyes were dark and intense, the gold alien’s eyes were serene, but only on the surface. The longer Hinata looked at these strange people, the more he could sense their wildness, a level of complete and absolute abandon that was somehow encompassing of the universe itself, in vastness and depth of feeling. Hinata took a startled breath, and in unison three pairs of eyes were fixed on him.

Rather than appearing hostile, however, the aliens seemed abashed to have been caught. The red one dropped the wires everywhere with a yelp and sprang toward the striped one, and they clung to each other with so much force they spun in circles, yipping in alarm. The gold one shrank further into the shadows, their eyes peering out in startlement.

“Oops,” Hinata said. Tanaka didn’t respond, and when Hinata turned to look at him he saw the man trying to stifle his laughter under his hand.

“I just- they scattered like chickens!” Tanaka choked, slapping a second hand to his mouth. Hinata relaxed fractionally at his response, and turned his eyes to face the three bewildered aliens yet again.

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice carrying across Tanaka’s snickers. The three stiffened at his voice, but no one moved to respond. Hinata tried again.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, slower this time. The three exchanged glances with one another, and the red one hummed something to the others. They stepped forward and, after a pause, shrugged. Hinata blinked. They shrugged again and gestured toward their mouth, then shook their head.

“Oh.” Hinata looked at Tanaka again. “I don’t think they can understand me.”

“No shit.” Tanaka had recovered from his laughing fit, at least. His eyes were narrowed in consideration as he looked over the three. “Well,” he said after a moment. “I have good news and bad news.”

“What’s the good news?” Hinata asked cautiously.

“The good news is that I know who- or what- these guys are. They’re most likely not a threat,”

“And…the bad news?”

Tanaka shook his head. “They’re definitely not supposed to be here, so somebody is in trouble, and I don’t know who it is yet.”


End file.
